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Earlier this fall at the start of “Arrow” season three, series executive producer Marc Guggenheim stated that with “The Flash” now on air, the more senior show would return to more grounded — read, less-superpowered — territory. With the two-part “The Flash”/”Arrow” crossover scheduled to air next week, Guggenheim told CBR News that the experience of working on those episodes have changed his mind.

“What’s fun about episode 8 for ‘Arrow’ is it proved to me, as a writer and a producer, hey, you know what? You can do metahumans on ‘Arrow’ without feeling like the show is changing its tone too much,” Guggenheim told CBR this past weekend at a screening of the two episodes in Los Angeles, adding that viewers may see more metahumans on the series following the crossover. “It’s something that we all sort of collectively realized — hey, the show can handle that. So that’s kind of cool. I might have to amend my earlier comment from the beginning of the year, just because this kind of works.”

In late September on CBR Executive Producer Jonah Weiland’s talk radio show, Guggenheim said, “We’re not really planning on revisiting superpowers or enhanced abilities during season three. We are really returning to the show’s roots of a very grounded world where it’s very realistic. We may take occasional artistic license with things, but for the most part, everything is pretty well and truly grounded in real-life things and real-life science.” Then at a press screening of the “Arrow” third season premiere in early October, Guggenheim replied to a question on whether or not Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh) would be seen utilizing the Atom’s shrinking powers by stating, “With ‘The Flash’ in existence, there’s no real compelling reason for us to do superpowers on ‘Arrow,’ because we can bring characters to ‘Flash’ to have superpowers.”

Superpowers were a major presence in the second season of “Arrow,” due to the presence of Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett) and his similarly Mirakuru-fueled army of super-soldiers. Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) was first introduced in “Arrow” season two, but wasn’t seen using his super-speed on screen until the series premiere of “The Flash.”

“The Flash” and “Arrow” crossover starts with “Flash” episode “Flash vs. Arrow,” scheduled to air Tuesday, Dec. 2 on The CW; and concludes on Wednesday, Dec. 3 with “Arrow” episode “The Brave and the Bold.” For Guggenheim — a lifelong comic book fan and frequent comics writer — the opportunity to bring the richly held tradition of the superhero crossover to the small screen was a unique pleasure.

“The 10-year-old boy in me is pinching himself,” Guggenheim said to CBR. “I still can’t quite wrap my brain around the enormity of that. I grew up reading comics like ‘Marvel Two-in-One,’ ‘Marvel Team-Up,’ ‘Brave and the Bold’ and ‘DC Comics Presents.’ I always loved those team-up books. I always liked seeing different characters connect with each other. On television, my favorite shows growing up were ‘Bionic Woman’ and ‘Six Million Dollar Man,’ and my favorite episodes that they would do were the crossovers. The opportunity to do a superhero crossover on television — it checks off so many fanboy boxes for me that I don’t even know really how to process it all.”